Research on marital quality and child functioning has moved beyond establishing relationships between the two constructs and is now concerned with the processes linking marital conflict with diverse outcomes. One frequently cited process through which marital quality is thought to be associated with child outcomes involves how the parent-child relationship is affected by marital conflict. This study proposes to examine the marital problem-solving to parent-child relationship link using longitudinal data from 138 families (i.e., mothers, fathers, children) collected five times over a period of 5 years as families made their initial transition to parenthood. The proposed study is unique in that it examines marital problem-solving and parent-child interactions using a holistic approach and focuses on the longitudinal course of qualitatively different styles of marital problem-solving and parent-child interactions. Utilizing a holistic approach in studying families confers many advantages over traditional variable-centered approaches. First, we can combine important dimensions within subsystems of the family to represent qualitatively different styles of interacting and, are thus more likely to identify naturally occurring and ecologically valid interaction styles. Second, the entire configuration of variables describing marital and parenting interactions is considered simultaneously, rather than examining each variable in isolation. This is important because any one variable under consideration may operate differently in the context of another variable. For example, marital problem-solving styles characterized by high conflict and high support-validation are likely to have different consequences than are marital problem solving styles characterized by high conflict and high defensiveness. The proposed research has four specific aims: (1) to identify, describe, and validate patterns of marital problem-solving behaviors across the transition to parenthood; (2) to identify, describe, and validate patterns of mother-child and father-child interaction during the first 5 years of children's life; (3) to determine how patterns of marital problem-solving relate to patterns of parent-child interaction; and, (4) to examine moderators (e.g., personality, developmental stage of the child, gender of parents and children) of patterns of marital problem-solving and parent-child interaction.